In this post, Mark Naison explains why so many parents seek to place their children in charters in New York City. Fr 12 years, the Bloomberg administration showered preferential treatment on the charters and ignored the needs of the public schools tat enroll 94% of the city’s children.
He predicts that the policies of Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina will reverse some or most of the damage done to public schools by the policies of the past dozen years:
He writes:
Charter School Growth, Bloomberg Style, Creates Dilemma for the de Blasio Administration- A Special Report to BK Nation
January 31, 2014
By Dr. Mark Naison
In today’s New York Post, an article appeared claiming that Charter School Applications in New York City were 56 percent ahead of what they were at this time last year, putting pressure on the de Blasio administration to re-evaluate its efforts to slow charter expansion.
Those numbers are REAL. They reflect the desperation of inner city and working class parents who hope to find high performing, safe schools for their children and see charters as the best hope for that.
However, they are making that judgment, based on what they observe in their own neighborhoods, not because of the inherent superiority of charter schools, but because the Bloomberg Administration rigged the game by giving huge preference to charter schools, both substantively and symbolically, and using charters not as a strategy to improve public education in the city, but as a wedge to privatize it and smash the influence of the city’s teachers union.
The challenge of the de Blasio administration is see what happens when the competition is even, and when public schools are given the resources, encouragement and support charters were given in the Bloomberg years. When and if that happens, the demand for charters is likely to decrease as parents see public schools in their neighborhood improve dramatically and innovative new public schools open in their neighborhoods.
Under the Bloomberg administration, aided and abetted by police systems of the U.S. and NY State Departments of Education, charter schools were consciously selected over public schools as the preferred alternative when low performing public schools were closed. This preference was manifested in several important ways:
• Charters were given facilities in public schools rent free.
• In schools where they were co-located with public schools, the charters were given preferential access to auditoriums, gymnasiums, laboratories, and often put in the most desirable locations in the buildings.
• Although charters selected their students by lottery, they were allowed to weed out students who had disciplinary problems, or who performed poorly on standardized tests. As a result, according to Ben Chapman of the Daily News, only 6 percent of charter students are ELL students and 9 percent special needs students, far lower than the city average for public schools.
• When you count space, charters received more city funding than public schools, and when you add to that private contributions that they solicited, charters spent significantly more per student than public schools.
• Community organizations and universities willing to start new schools were encouraged by the NYC Department of Education to start charter schools rather than public schools.
These preferences had an absolutely devastating effect on inner city public schools, which were in the same neighborhood as the charters. In the case of schools who had charter co-location, it led to humiliating exclusion from school facilities which they once had access to, leaving their students starved of essential resources. But in the case of all inner city public schools, it led to a drain of high performing students, whose parents put them in charters, and an influx of ELL students, special needs students and students pushed out of charters for disciplinary problems, taxing those schools resources and making it much more difficult for them to perform well on standardized tests. The school closing policies of the Bloomberg administration added to the stress on those already hard pressed schools, forcing their staffs to work under the threat of closure and exile to the infamous “rubber room” for teachers who were in excess when schools were closed.
What occurred was a “tale of two school systems” within inner city neighborhoods- one favored, given preferential access to scare resources, hailed as the “savior” of inner city youth; the others demonized, stigmatized, deprived of resources, threatened with closure and deluged with students charter schools did not want.
If you were a parent, which school would you want to send your child to?
But what happens when the game is no longer rigged? When charter schools have to pay rent? When they can’t push out ELL and Special needs students? When facilities in co-located schools are fairly distributed? When schools are no longer given letter grades and threatened with closing, but are given added resources when they serve students with greater needs? When universities and community organizations are encouraged to start innovative public schools, not just create charters?
If all those things happen, and I expect some of them will during the next few years of a de Blasio/Farina Department of Education, then public schools in the inner city will gradually improve, charters in those neighborhoods will become less selective, and students, on the whole, will have enhanced choice and opportunity because there will be more good schools in the city.
The current hunger to enroll students in charter schools is understandable, given the policies pursued by the Bloomberg Administration, but those policies, which undermined public education, did not enhance opportunity for all students, and pitted parent against parent and school against school in a competition for scarce resources.
The de Blasio policy of restoring public schools to public favor is a sound one, and should be pursued carefully, humanely, and with respect for the hunger of parents and students of New York City for good educational options
Mark D Naison
Professor of African American Studies and History
Fordham University
Co-Founder, Badass Teachers Association
Thank you Mark Naison. Please continue to keep us informed and updated and help us in other states too!
I am curious and have a question with no persuasion as to the outcome—I am just curious. Here goes:
Will teachers’ unions reform themselves after a this? When De Blasio unrigs the game, so to speak, and Punic schools in NYC regain their ground, will the teacher’s union have any period of self-reflection? Was there a positive give and take with the union ever? Or has it always put teachers against tax payers (an odd place to be). What kind of union reform will come out of corporate education reform?
Will more states become at will?
Pardon the early morning typos
Joanna, every teacher I know IS a taxpayer. Even though our unions have lost much bargaining power, they are still the only collective voice that we have. We teachers should have a say in determining our working conditions (class loads, planning periods, leave time, etc.) and not having our jobs terminated without due process of law. How many organizations do you know of that support and speak for teachers?
Sooxie. .. I hear ya. I’m just trying to figure out why there is not a middle ground. Philosophically. Thank you for responding.
Joanne, the unions have created such a stranglehold on the DoE that they have created the systemic generations of failure that we see in NYC. Public charters are nothing more than a result of a demand by parents for something better. Charters are not WalMarts coming in to shut the little guy down, they ARE the little guy fighting against the behemoth power elite. We call this the union-political-educational complex (think military-industrial complex).
Let me give you an example of the type of nonsense the union has casued that is a blatant example of why our zoned schools are failing. One of my college friends is a teacher at a ps here in Brooklyn, she is great, she tries to spend as much time at the school as she can, she has after school time with kids to tutor when she can. So, about a year ago, after a year of doing this, she was approached by her rep who told her she could not work so many hours. Now bear in mind she is not hourly paid and was basically volunteering these extra hours. Sorry, too bad, the union has strict rules on how many hours she can work and she was forbidden from going over them. She told the union rep that she was just helping out kids. You think they cared? This is why charters get better results, they do not have unions putting forth restrictive rules that stop teachers from working as they see fit. In the union schools teachers must conform to rules set down to them by negotiators.
What is it you think the unions need to fix? I think they gave too much already by agreeing to CC$$ and tying evals in with test scores.
I don’t know. I work in an at will state.
What is it the union busters think they need to fix?
Joanna, what union busters feel the need to “fix” is workers having any input into their wages, hours and working conditions.
I assume that is an ALEC driven agenda also that then gets carried out in at will states, which just blows my mind. We already don’t have bargaining power—so why bother kicking us?
To anyone out there listening. . .what are the major differences in the public education struggles right now in union states vs. at will states. What is the Venn diagram?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
@Joanna – I find the question confusing as well, but I come at it from a different take, being from NY & NJ where there were always teachers’ unions.
Growing up in a college town in upstate NY: we had excellent schools & teachers. The only ‘union-bashing ‘ talk I ever heard was from John Birchers back in the day; theirs seemed to be a reflexive & nationalized platform having nothing to do w/our town. Sure, locals didn’t like the taxes, but it was the proliferation of tax-free college property that came in for the bashing. There was local control & annual budgets; when taxes got too high, budgets got turned down.
Then 20 yrs in NYC: lots of loose union-bashing talk constantly. Lots of things to decry about NYC public schools, yet the so-called union problems cited seemed always to be about admin issues promulgated by city admin (like social promotion), or gen failure of admin (graft & corruption – admins literally stealing from their budgets.)
20yrs in NJ especially confusing, probably due to the completely out-of-whack property-tax system. In my fancy town, local taxpayers see their #1 school as a property-value plus, & view paying 20k+ taxes as a bargain compared to putting even 1 kid in private school for 30k+. Again– local control. Very little teacher-union-bashing heard here. Yet right next door in Newark, 7 times as many p.s. students as in my town have not had local control in 20 yrs (run by state); as far as I can tell, teachers’ union, tho plenty of bashing, has almost no power at all. Looks to me like the same as the situation in those states where entire school system is run by the state: whether union or no, state has all power over teachers.
My conclusion: union-bashing, like teacher-bashing in general, is just another way anti-public-schools people have of saying to hell with the public I’ve only enough $ for myself.
I love Mark’s letter. Wish the NYT and Post would publish!
STANDARDIZED Lies, Money & Civil Rights: How Testing Is Ruining Public Education
A very wealthy friend sent me this article today:
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21596558-charter-schools-are-working-new-yorks-mayor-wants-stop-them-killing-golden?frsc=dg%7Ca
I am glad I had Naison’s article to reply with.
Any thoughts on this article in the Economist?
Here is the Stanford Study that the Economist speaks of:
Click to access CredoReport2013.pdf
I think the conclusion says it all:
:…Based on the findings presented here, the typical student in New York City charter schools gains more learning in a year than his TPS counterparts, amounting to one month of additional gains in reading and five months in math. The learning advantage in Harlem equates to less than a full month of additional learning in reading but an additional seven months of progress in math. These outcomes are
consistent with the result that charter schools have significantly better results than TPS for minority students who are in poverty, with more pronounced impacts in math than in reading….”
So, the typical public charter student at graduation is 5+ years ahead of the kids coming from zoned schools in mathmatical skills and a year ahead in reading ability.
These are shocking results. Now ask yourself, why does our mayor want to kill these spectacular educational results and force the kids lucky enough to get them back into the downward spiralling zoned schools?
I think we need to be VERY wary of these self-reported numbers of parents who apply to charter schools. The application to charters does not signify intent to enroll, nor does it signify that parents choose charters over a neighborhood public school.
We shouldn’t be defensive about the 56,000 figure, we should demand that it be audited.
Keep in mind as well that there is no breakdown of grades in this 56,000 figure. So we’re talking about K-12 throughout the entire NYC. The way that the NYC DOE forces parents to put down their choices for schools (including Kindergarten now) drives the point home that charters are outside this process. In other words, if your first choice is Williamsburg School for Architecture and Design, applying to a charter school doesn’t jeopardize you’re acceptance to your first choice of high school. The same applies for middle schools and now elementary schools through Kindergarten Connect.
When we remember that people apply to several charters at a single time, and that the Common Application process allows parents to apply to 100 charter schools with a single click, it further unpacks the 56,000 figure.
With Kindergarten Connect in NYC (Bloomberg/Walcott’s sneaky “school choice” initiative), the DOE is actually paying to advertise charters alongside all neighborhood public schools. So while parents must tier their Kindergarten choices, they are told that charters don’t have tiers. You can just apply separately.
Finally, if you were to get data from where these applications came from, we could probably put money on them coming from the particular areas where charter schools are marketed most heavily – Bed Stuy, Harlem, and areas of the Bronx.
From our experience in North Brooklyn, the charter school demand is manufactured, and just one small part of a marketing campaign designed to influence political leadership and help out the lobbyists.
I think you need to watch the Lottery. A critically acclaimed documentary on the admissions process at Success Academy:
http://www.thelotteryfilm.com/
After you see it, you will think twice about your view of being sceptical of charter school applications.
The Lottery was made by Madeline Sackler, daughter of Jonathan Sackler, hedge fund multimillionaire, who supports anti-public school groups in Connecticut and across the country. His organization, ConnCAN and 50CAN, promotes charters and advocates for test-based evaluation of teachers. The movie does not mention the hundreds of thousands of dollars that HSA spent to drum up business for the lottery. It is slick propaganda.
How do you know that Madeline shares her fathers views? Ever hear of Mary Cheney?
Regardless of who made the documentary, watch it, see the thousands upon thousands of Harlem parents who turn up for admittance to Success and the horror in the faces of those who do not get in, and the adualtion of those who do. This is not a group of actors, this is real, this is how it happens, annually! Why are there not thousands of parents begging to get their kids into the local zoned schools they are dying to get out of?
I saw the documentary. Same propaganda as Waiting for Superman. Did not mention that Eva spent $325,000 on advertising and marketing to get the applicants (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/education/10marketing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)
She tried that in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and flopped. No big lottery there. Parents love their public schools.
MS….those are her father’s views and you have the same initials….hmmm.
Here in CT we call them ConnCON….super sleazy con artists.
Many American children and families love their neighborhood public schools. Branch out and educate yourself. Eva can fend for herself. She has the hedgeucators. Don’t cry for Eva.
See:
http://gopublicproject.org
INteresting that you say that Diane. I was opposed ot SACH and now Im a proud parent there. I put my kid in PS261 for K when my wife wanted SACH. After a year at PS261 we realized that SACH was the right school for our child and left the zoned school. You see, I have the experience of both sides. I wanted my zoned school to work, but it didnt, now I am at a charter and its been amazing. WHen you say that SACH has failed it shows how little you actually know about what is happening, SACH is thriving and moving to it changed our lives. We would have moved out of the city if not for the school.
As for the lottery in Cobble HIll, no kidding, Cobble HIll is rich!!! The majority of the kids in CH are at 29 or 58 and have no need for SA, but the kids at 261, 32 and the other schools stuck between CH and Park Slople (yes, the projects) demand better.
WHat you should be investing your time in, instead of attacking successful charters, is why ps261 is so mismanaged, why cant they have a crack management team like 29? Or ask Mrs Farina, after all, she was principal at 29!!!
Why does Eva have such a high turnover of teachers?
Linda, we left our zoned school. We have many friends who are still in that zoned school and are happy with it. I am not opposed to them or the school we left. I believe the teachers at that school are good people, they are simply mismanaged. The school was an absolute zoo. you drop your child off in the lunchroom and there are 150kids and no teachers. THe principle, who was utterly incompetent, would be yelling at them thru a bullhorn. The teachers would turn up to bring the kids to the classrooms at 8:35 when the kids arrived at 8. IT was a madhouse. Lunch and recess was even worse. Kids were ripping other kids cloths off, there was massive bullying taking place and the teachers were no where to be found. You see their contracts allows them breaks for lunch and recess. So some poor kid who was a TA at best was charged with watching 5 kindergartens at once. 125 kids, going ape$hit!!! On a weekly basis there was an event at that school, some kid grabbed a girl or lifted up her skirt, a boy pulled his pants down, a kid got punched in the face, etc, etc. It never stopped. And every time, the teachers had the same response, “Oh, it happened at lunch and we are not there, we get break then”. Always an excuse.
What is great about are charter is what they criticize it for, having standards, being regimented, watching the kids 110% of the time. Ive not gotten one call from our charter about some event that took place at lunch or recess, not one, you know why, because the teachers are with the kids 100% of the day, there is no time or moment for them to go brezerk. More improtantly, the charter does not accept that type of behavior. So when you read about all those suspensions, the reality is, the zoned schools are not suspending enough.
I could give you half a dozen examples of how much worse it is then my basic synopsis, like the parent teacher coordinator not calling parents back after their kids were involved in bullying situations or worse, or the principle turning up at PTA events tipsy with a boyfriend and paying zero attention to anyone or the OT telling parents they will get weekly training sessions for their kids and those sesions never taking place.
Here is the interesting part, PS261 is one of the better schools in the city. It has NYT articles acclaiming how great it is for its diversity. I can not imagine how bad it must be up in Harlem or the Bronx.
Linda,
The one thing that concerns me about SA is the teacher turnover. It does seem as if teachers come out of school and work for charters to improve their resume then go elsewhere after 3-4years. ITs clearly a resume builder. I wonder if this is healthy or not. But I also believe that SA is about a system, not an individual. At the zoned school we were told we would be lucky to get teacher x but screwed if we got teacher y going into first grade. At SA, the teacher is the same at every school and every level. They are interchangable, you do not have to rely on the luck fo getting a great teacher or lack of luck for getting the bad one that is protected by tenure.
Now, I can honestly say I debate this point. I truly believe that a great teacher can change a childs life, but at the same time you should not be stuck with a terrible teacher on pure luck. SA is a factory in this regard, you are buying into the system, not the teacher. You are trading in luck for consistency.
At our SA, every teacher is sub 30 and the principle is maybe 32 at most. But they are also super energetic and truly principled. Maybe that is better then the geezer at the zoned school who is jaded by the system and just working for that phat pension….
Marks letter is nothing more then political ideology based ranting with a blatant ineptitude for the facts. Lets start with the first fraudulent statement he makes, claiming that public charter schools are somehow not public schools. Anytime you hear someone make this claim you know they represent the union-political-educational complex who fear losing control of their rigged system and their control, regardless of how horrific their results are. Lets delve deeper into some of the follies the author makes such as stating that charters paying rent is somehow leveling the playing field when nothing could be further from the truth. Public charters receive thousands of dollars less in state funding vs zoned shcools. The math is basic, public schools get $21,000.00 per child and co-located charters get $13,500. The IBO came up with some funky accounting magic to try to make it closer by ingoring pension costs and assuming that charters already pay rent, so the IBO claims that public charters already pay defacto rent by being subsidized for it. IF they were charged real rent, this would double the true charge. What is worse, the rent would go to other public schools. There is no commen sense to a system where public schools pay rent to subsidize other public schools.
THe reality is that charters are doing a better job of teaching our children because they are not hamstrung by the union-political-educational complex who puts their pursiut of power over the children they are responsible for educating. Parents deserve choice, they deserve the best education for their children and many charters provide that better outcome.
There are plenty of areas where charters are not better than the local zoned school. I live near PS29 and 58 in Brooklyn, they are the most sought after zoned schools in the city and few parents who are lucky enough to get into those schools send their kids to the charter school that sits in between them. Yet ps261 and 32 are underperforming zoned schools and are losing students to the charter (Success Academy). So, as reality shows, choice works quite well. If those parents could get their kids out of 261 and into 29 or 58 they would do that too.
So would you advocate going to just charters? That seems like the most obvious conclusion.
Absolutely not. In fact my commentary points to the opposite. As mentioned, there are examples of great zoned schools that do not have parents dying to get out of them for better opportunities elsewhere. To me, the best system has multiple choices for parents. Magnets, traditional zoned schools, charters, gifted and talented programs, even vouchers for religious or private schools.
Every child is different and every system is different and every zone is different. Here in Brooklyn its block to block. If you lived on the other side of my street you are in ps29 and you are set, no need for a charter or anything, your kid is golden. But on my side, we are stuck in a mismanaged school, we need better options.
I believe in choice, I think kids should not be forced into failing zoned schools because there is a one size fits all policy in place. This is what the system has been for the last 60 years and look where we are. Mrs Ravitch and her supporters believe in the failing system. THey support a standard that is a race to the bottom, a downward spiral. For the life of me I can not understand how they have the views they have when the facts present themselves so openly. I have to believe that they support a political establisment over what is best for our kids. Otherwise, they would be open to the alternatives they so hate…
MS. I don’t see how a system with any consistency or best practice can be worked towards if choice that differs here and there. It seems random and presumes constant fluctuation. It seems very inefficient. And extremely expensive.
To me if democratic ideals are not the root of education efforts that are public, then they become beholden to either their corporate backers or cults of personality and dogma. Your description sounds lovely, but maybe like gingerbread houses and Popsicles are lovely. I suppose the best analogy would be a variety of gardens. Gardens require understanding the soil and climate, just as establishing schools require understanding the population, and the actual work of the garden should not be hampered by “union” mentality. (As an aside the example you gave me above about a union worker admonishing another union worker indicates a problem within the union; that is, if a union worker did not like being told not to work extra hours, shouldn’t they take thAt up with the union?). Which brings me back to my original questions about unions. If one extreme wants choice and no unions, and the other wants solidarity in public schools with unions, isn’t the middle ground solidarity in Public schools without unions? (That’s pretty much what we had in nonunion state of NC until choice came in and muddied the waters).
MS
Joanna (6:01 pm) has a great point.
If SA has the secret sauce, shouldn’t every child benefit?
Let Eva ramp up, accept EVERYONE ( even those whose parents lack the ware withal to notice how crappy the public school is…I mean, come on, the school you describe above (10:59 pm) is not the sort of place a dog should be parked, let alone a child!) then all kids can have interchangeable teachers and great test scores.
Win win, right?
http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/206002/dinapoli-again-questions-brighter-choices-school-contracts/#comments
From the Comptroller’s Newsletter and the Audits:
Comptroller DiNapoli Releases School Audits
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli Tuesday announced his office completed audits of the Brighter Choice Charter Middle School for Boys; Brighter Choice Charter Middle School for Girls; Frewsburg Central School District; Holley Central School District; and the Homer Central School District
Excerpts:
the Brighter Choice Charter Middle School for Boys in ALBANY
The School entered into a three-year compact agreement with the Foundation in June 2011. All Board members voted in favor of the compact agreement, except for the Board Chairman, who recused himself from voting because he is also the Foundation’s Executive Director.
We reviewed the revised compact document and could not determine how delivery of services will be measured because the revised compact was insufficiently detailed. Therefore, School officials do not have a means to determine whether the School received the services. The fee structure, based on a percentage of per pupil revenue, does not appear to be reasonable, as the services being provided do not have any bearing on the number of students at the School or the State Education Department’s Charter School Tuition rate
During the audit period, there were two Board members who were also officers or directors of the Foundation.5 While both filed financial disclosure forms, neither disclosed their relationship with the Foundation on these forms.
Brighter Choice Charter Middle School for Girls;
We found that the School did not budget properly. The School failed to accurately budget a number of expense accounts, including failing to budget some account codes and using unrealistic amounts in others. In addition, the School does not modify its budget during the year. During fiscal years 2011-12 and 2012-13, School offi cials had budgeted for a $650,362 surplus. However, the actual net income amounted to only $89,497, a shortfall of $560,865. The $89,497 total net income was less than 14 percent of what School offi cials had anticipated over that period. The failure to properly prepare, monitor and modify the budget could lead to the deterioration of the School’s fi nancial condition.
DiNapoli is a hack for the teachers union. WHy do you think he announced his attempted audit of Success Academy Harlem 1 from a meeting with the UFT? Educate yourself a touch by reading this:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/schoolyard-bully-article-1.1400517
Interestingly enough, it is illegal to audit one individual school based on NY State law, you can only audit a zone or district. Yet DiNapoli thinks its ok to audit specific charters. WHy? Because he is a political operative taking part in witchhunts that have no intent other then to force charters to spend money. The same money that would be spent on educating kids, but instead, on lawyer fees.
Success Academy successfully blocked DiNapolis Salem Witchhunt on their school and rightfully so. This guy deserves to be voted out or recalled. It is a blatant waste of taxpayer dollars when special interests drive audits with malicous intent. We call this frivilous in the law community!!!
MS,
Let’s be clear. Success Academy is one of the worst offenders when it comes to using marketing and spin to manufacture a demand for her school. In Williamsburg, Success Academy spent well over $1300 per seat in marketing dollars. That doesn’t even include their full time staff that handles marketing or the free OpEds the NYPost loves to give her.
Here’s the real story though: we had a fake applicant apply for Kindergarten to Success Academy Williamsburg at the very last minute – and she was admitted! This after Eva Moskowitz was quoted in the NYDailyNews and the NYPost that the waiting list for that specific school was well over 600.
While your blind loyalty to the Success Academy model is certainly passionate, it’s presumptuous to assume that any “success” your child is experiencing wouldn’t be achieved in a public school setting.
The secret sauce of Success Academy isn’t the curriculum. If it were, Eva Moskowitz – in all her generosity to provide a great education – would share her curriculum with all other schools. After all, Success Academy just uses a modified version of “Success for All,” a totally scripted and timed curriculum, that (you are correct) makes every teacher expendable leading to a turnover rate that can approach 50% sometimes.
You know what slows down that Success for All script? English Language Learners and children with IEPs.
Those are the 5 and 6 years olds who get suspended for up to 30 days or told that they just aren’t a good fit for Success Academy – even as Success Academy is sold as the best possible model for all children.
Success Academy is an unsustainable use of tax dollars and, frankly, a lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Great op-ed in the weekend Wall Street Journal titled ‘Teahcers Union Enemy #1’ about Eva and the war against public schools our new mayor is waging.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304434104579382993628994458?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304434104579382993628994458.html
Yes, especially if demeaning experienced, certified, unionized teachers is sport for Eva and all her followers. Congratulations on your new hobby.
Thank you, and some of u will support the mayor and change this tide
Great article.